Bear Left!

Fact of the Week

**Fact of the Week**
The first American president with an MBA may not have hit the trifecta, but he has still managed a dubious exacta. From July through September, the major stock indexes had their worst quarter since the final quarter of 1987. And domestic equity mutual funds had their worst quarter since 1981, with only 86 up and over 8000 down for the quarter. Source: New York Times, 6 October 2002.

**This week's columns**
It's the Economy, Not Iraq, Stupid! Paul Corrigan Despite the best efforts of Republican politicians and their spinmasters, the American public appears poised to send politicians a message in November's midterm elections.	Bad Credit Tim Francis-Wright Even the most responsible state tax credits can be bad deals for the states issuing them.

Red Pepper news on Iraq.
No Rush to War: a collection of articles from The Nation.
Target: Iraq from GlobalSecurity.org.
Iraq's Nuclear Weapon Programme from the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Iraq WMD Dossier from the International Institute of Strategic Studies.
Iraq dossier presented to Parliament by Tony Blair.
New York Times op-ed ad signed by 33 international relations scholars (HTML version of the ad).
More, alas, likely to come.

Butler Accues US of Nuclear Hypocrisy: Even educated Americans ignore the hypocrisy of the American stance on nuclear weapons (Gerard Noonan, Sydney Morning Herald).
Help Us to Stop the War: The Bush plan to attack Iraq is both illegal and unconstitutional (Scott Ritter, The Guardian).
Fighting Terrorism with Democracy: Keeping the gains of western societies requires abandoning a permanent war footing (Richard Rorty, The Nation).
One Vote Away: Democrats need to prevent Republicans from winning control of the entire federal government in November (Nick Confessore, Washington Monthly).
Nascent Nonviolence: Influential Palestinians are decrying and renouncing violence, and Israelis should take note (Eli Kintisch, The American Prospect).
Bin Laden Still Alive, Reveals Spy Satellite: An intercepted phone call purports to be between Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden (Jason Burke, The Observer).
Bush's Real Goal in Iraq: Bush intends to make the United States into a full-fledged global empire (Jay Bookman, Atlanta Journal-Constitution).

"Bear left!"/"Right, Frog!" (Kermit and Fozzie, The Muppet Movie)

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